Tuesday, December 29, 2009

In memory of Shirley (Sisko) Harkins, who lost her battle with cancer, here reprinted by permission is her essay "Dead Air" from the new book HEART OF A MILITARY WOMAN by Sheryl L. Roush and Eldonna Lewis Fernandez.

"Dead Air" appears in the book's section "Guess What? I Enlisted!":

When I enlisted in 1976, the Women’s Army Corp (WAC) was in the process of being disestablished as a separate branch of the Army. I’m very proud to have been one of the last WAC’s, serving during this exciting era in military history.

Women were being admitted to West Point. Maternity leaves replaced compulsory discharges, and the umbrella, a traditional military taboo, was approved for issue in the name of promoting a positive feminine image. The powers that be even retained a designer to fashion a sporty new mint green, wash and wear uniform. The times they were a changin’.

There were those, of course, who weren’t enthusiastic about the trend. I encountered several male soldiers who appeared to be threatened by the growing presence of women in the motor pool, the mess hall, and even in co-ed barracks.

Some men attempted to deflate our influence with casual flirtation. Others insisted we carry our weight —- equal pay for equal work, by golly. None, however, stood out so predominantly in my memories as a certain surly NCO at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Even though I’d have to change it here to protect the innocent, I wish I recalled his name. He was a gristly, Old Army type —- a field instructor attached to the signal school where I was trained. I was offered only three occupational options: food service, clerkship, or communications. I’d opted to be a radio teletype operator —- a dinosaur Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) like the WACS that no longer exists.

Quaint historical reference makes for great story telling. Ask any veteran, young or old. When two or more gather together, the war stories commence in earnest.

The Old Army NCO taught in the field, training the students to apply classroom academics to the actual equipment we’d use to perform our duties. We knew the basics of setting up and maintaining a radio network, but hadn’t learned a great deal about trouble-shooting. His job was to station himself with one network station each day and teach us how to deal with real life obstacles as they cropped up.

His approach was stoic -— stand back and let us flounder, making one frantic mistake after another, until the entire network crashed. Afterwards, he’d explain what went wrong and help us to figure out how we could have responded more effectively.

In theory, his methods seemed valid enough, but his criticism was often sarcastic and condescending. Locking us in a poker face look, he’d observe every move without offering the slightest hint as to whether we were right or wrong. We never knew what was coming: reward or reprimand. It was excruciating.

One morning, I was manning the network controlling station. By the time he stuck his head through the door of the rig where I was working, I’d already lost communication with one of my network stations.

The others were apparently beginning to panic, thumbing through their ciphering and frequency manuals to determine if their settings were correct. Lack of confidence in their own training may have caused them to fiddle with the dials.

The gristly NCO watched while I performed a network check, hailing the other two stations and getting dead air in response. I feverishly typed in the abbreviated commands again and got nothing. Staring at the teletype for a few seconds, I prayed for inspiration. He was expecting me to do something, so I hopped out of the rig and headed toward a nearby jeep.

I slipped on the Morse code key leg strap and began tapping out the commands. The NCO followed. He rested an elbow on the crash pad, leaning in toward me. He didn’t say a word.

When the keypad failed, I sat for awhile staring at the field phone, knowing that any transmission on it would be unsecured. I glanced at the NCO, but received no encouragement either way.

I decided to go for broke, snatching up the handset and cranking the generator. He was going to chew me up and spit me out no matter what I did, so I had nothing to lose.

Via landline, I was able to contact each network station. Careful not to reveal any classified information over the airways, I instructed them to consult their manuals so we were all on the same page.

Afterwards, I jumped back in the rig and ran the network test again. Oh, to hear the glorious beeps, clicks, and whirs of life. We operated the rest of that day without incident. The NCO never uttered a word.

Later that day, back in the barracks, I was summoned to the pay phone in the foyer. I greeted the caller, hearing tinny juke box music, tinkling glassware, and raucous voices in the background. Because he spoke so few times, I didn’t recognize the NCO’s gravelly voice until he introduced himself.

The hair rose on the back of my neck. I must have really messed up if he was calling from the NCO Club to tell me so. Judging by the way he slurred his words, the lecture probably wasn’t going to be polite.

When I didn’t respond, he continued. “I hate women,” he said. “I especially hate women in the Army, so it really hurts to have to tell you this.” He paused for what sounded like another slug from his cocktail.

“But you did one heck of a job out there this morning getting that network back up and running.” Of course, being Old School, he didn’t say “heck,” but I took the liberty to paraphrase.

When I caught my breath after the initial shock, I thanked him. He promised that if I ever told anyone about our conversation, one-sided as it was, that he would promptly deny it. With that, he hung up, and I was left listening to dead air again.

I would go on to receive promotions and other honors from the United States Army, but none gratified me as much as a phone call from a gristly Old School NCO with a chip on his shoulder for women.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Jim Hake, founder and CEO of Spirit of America (www.spiritofamerica.net) and the author of "101 Ways to Help the Cause in Afghanistan" wrote the op-ed piece "Spirit of America in Afghanistan: Ordinary citizens can contribute to our victory" in the December 27th Wall Street Journal.

The opinion piece begins:

In 2003, Sgt. First Class Jay Smith and his Army Special Forces team were based in Orgun-e, Afghanistan and were taking regular rocket fire from al Qaeda fighters. But Sgt. Smith and his men were armed with an effective counterweapon—gifts of school supplies and sports gear for children, and clothing, shoes and blankets for nearby families, all provided by American donors.

After receiving these items, the grateful villagers reciprocated by forming a night-watch patrol to protect our soldiers. Good relations with locals helped save American lives. I've witnessed this success on the front lines, aided by support from home, repeated many times since Sgt. Smith.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

I sat through the new movie BROTHERS, which is a remake of a European film, thinking to myself: What's the story here?

More upsetting was the thought: Does the Marine Corps really not require Marines to go through rigorous psychological rehabilitation after they've been captured and tortured by enemy fighters?

I cannot recommend this film. Instead I recommend you go to my site www.FilmsThatSupportOurTroops.com and download the free report on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And then send the report link to every military family you know.

The major situation in BROTHERS should never have happened. The returned Marine's family members should have realized he was experiencing PTSD and that he desperately needed professional help. And they should have gotten him that help immediately!___

We're hoping you haven't forgotten our guys and gals serving across the globe this holiday season. We've got some great ways you can show your support no matter what your financial situation or schedule is.

We haven't talked about it much but this year was the hardest yet for eMail Our Military. After 8 years of supporting our troops we've had to cut back our hours of operation to accommodate for our volunteers work schedules.

We lost quite a few volunteers because of the economy. No one at eMail Our Military takes a paycheck and there just wasn't enough time for people to volunteer AND manage their work schedules just to pay the bills.

Sadly, this is also the 1st year we weren't able to send out massive amounts of care packages to our troops in time for Christmas. Financially, ff things don't change dramatically in 2010 we may be forced to close our doors forever.

It's been a wonderful 8 years and we're still optimistic that we'll get the support we need as an organization to keep supporting our military in 2010 and beyond - we'll definitely need your help.

We're still hopeful that many of you will take a moment to register to send a message of support to our troops in time for the holidays.

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Though we still don't have our official online eMOM registration form up and running, we've got an online registration form that will get the job done! If you've been waiting for online registration now is the time to sign up. We can't leave this up for too long because it isn't tied to our database but we want to make sure that everyone who wants to email our troops has an opportunity to do so this holiday season.

If registering isn't your thing then why not send a one time message of support to our military instead? You can email a message of support to Messages@http://www.facebook.com/l/a7bb1;eMailOurMilitary.com and your message may appear on our website, blog, facebook page or in one of our care packages to our military!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Donna McAleer and Erin Solaro in the December 12th Washington Post article "Full participation for our 'sisters-in-arms'" present several reasons why women should now be allowed to serve in combat roles.

My favorite part of the article is this sentence:

An internal Marine assessment of its "female engagement teams" that has been discussed in recent weeks on military Web sites quoted an Afghan village elder as saying, "Your men come to fight, but we know the women are here to help."

Donna McAleer is a West Point graduate and former Army officer who is the author of the forthcoming book "Porcelain on Steel: Women of West Point's Long Gray Line" and Erin Solaro is the author of "Women in the Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military," which is based on her embedded tours with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Both THE HURT LOCK and THE MESSENGER -- two of the films on my site www.FilmsThatSupportOurTroops.com -- have been receiving awards. Both films, in fact, are on the list of the American Film Institute's top 10 films for the AFI Awards.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. honored THE HURT LOCKER for best picture and best director (Kathryn Bigelow).

And in other news also reported in the December 14th Daily Variety: THE HURT LOCKER won awards for director and ensemble cast from the Washington, D.C., Area Film Critics Assn.

The film also got five awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics: best picture, actor (Jeremy Renner), director, cinematography (Barry Ackroyd) and editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innes).

Both films are truly compelling -- and it is terrific that they earned these awards. I feel confident there will be more to follow.

Note added one day later: THE HURT LOCKER won the New York Film Critics Circle's awards for best picture and best director.___

Sunday, December 13, 2009

I came across the website www.herwarhervoice.com for military spouses, and I asked Melissa Seligman (on left in photo above) and Christina Piper (on right in photo above), the two women whose site this is, to write about how the site came about.

Melissa is an army wife, mother, author of The Day After He Left for Iraq and Simply Green as well as contributor to Heart of a Military Woman, co-author of A Heart Apart, co-founder of Her War, Her Voice! and can be reached at melissa@herwarhervoice.com

Christina is an army wife, mother, veteran, co-author of A Heart Apart, contributor to Heart of a Military Woman, co-founder of Her War, Her Voice! and can be reached at christina@herwarhervoice.com

When we first met, standing across from each other in our boys’ gymnastic class, we never imagined creating a support group for military wives or speaking about the real struggles revolving around deployments. How could we? We were still stuck in the mindset that being strong was equivalent to being silent.

It wasn’t until our initial conversation that we began to realize just how stuck in that mindset we were. “Do you ever just get really angry?” was the ice-breaking question. It definitely was not the typical “How long have you lived here?” conversation. That real moment, that shared burden exposed, that brief reprieve of seeing another person reflecting the same pain was the original inception of Her War, Her Voice.

We never set out to make money, reach a bestseller list, or to change anyone’s opinion of a military wife, or even military life. Our vision has never revolved around publicity or sitting on Oprah’s couch. But it has from the very beginning revolved around that shared moment of understanding. And that need to voice our struggle in a comforting and supportive manner.

Along with the fear of being seen as “whiners” or “airing dirty laundry” we were also nervous about whether our idea of providing a place for women to speak freely about their real struggles and then allowing others to uplift them would even resonate with other military women.

That niggling feeling of “are we alone?” was very hard to get past. But from our first step out as Her War women, it became immediately clear that not only are we not alone, but we are also surrounded daily by silent warriors.

Women we have known for years or have lived beside as neighbors came to us, anonymously voicing their pain and struggle. Wives of higher ranking officers as well as girlfriends of privates began to speak, understand, and rejoice in the unity of our shared burdens and victories.

Between us existed an FRG leader, a veteran, four young children and an author. We began to pool our experiences and our strengths in order to launch a campaign against the divorce rate in our military. But, one of the most important aspects in waging this battle was that we first had to be willing to speak about our successes and our failures. Our inabilities to do this alone. Our need for something to help us through.

We had to be willing to put our hearts and our stories on the line in hopes that others would begin to understand and to see the silent warriors on the frontlines every single day: our military families.

It hasn’t been easy filleting ourselves for all to see. It hasn’t been pretty at times when we talk about depression, anger, and victories in our daily lives. But through it all, it has been real. Honest. And gut-wrenchingly hard.

We work daily to provide a haven for those wives, girlfriends, and fiancés (and the male version of those) who seek a place where their voice is heard and celebrated. We hope to offer a shoulder, an ear, and a hand up out of the trenches. We are on the frontlines with these women, blogging about working through a third deployment as well as recovering from a third one.

Her War, Her Voice has already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams in giving us the chance to voice our stories in the Heart of a Military Woman book as well as the opportunity to work with other organizations such as Operation Military Family concerning supporting our military marriages.

It has also provided the opportunity to expand and express our passion for helping our war children through these painful deployments. Our first interactive book for military children has come to fruition. Not only are we looking to the future for more ways to uplift the voice of the military spouse, but we are also prepared and geared to lead the rally cry through the war zone.

When we first met, sharing a moment of quiet struggle and stoic silence, we could have never imagined speaking out for and with other military wives. We are strong. Independent. And each of us has a beautiful story of heartache and victory to share.

Her War, Her Voice will not cease until every voice, every story, has been lifted, heard, and celebrated. We deserve that much. After all, we have the hardest job in the military: we love someone in uniform.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

As if anyone needed a study to know this, the children of military personnel suffer more emotionally than the children of civilians.

The December 7th Wall Street Journal article "Study Gauges Toll on Military Children" by Stephen Power discusses the study carried out by researchers at Rand Corp. who, with funding from the National Military Family Association, interviewed approximately 1,500 military families in which a parent had been or was currently deployed.

Here are the results of this study:

It found that children of such families were twice as likely as those from civilian families to report experiencing elevated anxiety symptoms, such as getting frightened for no apparent reason or feeling that they couldn't be alone. Some 30% of children from military families reported experiencing such symptoms, compared with 15% of children from civilian families.

People without combat exposure, including children, can be suffering from PTSD.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

"On May 21, 2007, 21-year old Taryn Davis lost her husband, Michael, to a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq. Feeling lost and alone, she began traveling around the country to hear other women's stories of love, tragedy and survival.

"Through this film and the American Widow Project organization, we hope America's young military widows and widowers are inspired by the willpower and strength of those in their shoes and realize that they are not alone."

I've just received a copy of the new nonfiction book HEART OF A MILITARY WOMAN by Sheryl L. Roush and Eldonna Lewis Fernandez. (The above is an affiliate link.)

Sheryl is a former Navy wife "honoring the unique lifestyle, challenges and dedication of military life." Eldonna is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant "with 23 years of honorable military service."

The book is a collection of essays by military members and their families. And I'm pleased to be one of the contributors.

Here from the book is my essay "Proper Mrs. Lieutenants in 1970":

On my third date in late winter of 1967 with the young man who would become my husband, Mitch said to me: “I’m going to Vietnam.” At that moment the song “Duke of Earl” was playing in the background of the party we were attending with other members of the newspaper staff of the State News, Michigan State University’s daily newspaper. Over 40 years ago, and I still remember it, as the saying goes, “like yesterday.”

At that time the Vietnam War was raging – battlefield casualties were shown on the nightly news (albeit in black and white). And the anti-Vietnam protesters were raging too. No voluntary army then – a draft (although the first draft lottery in December 1969 had not yet taken place). Mitch was a junior, two years ahead of me, and he was in Army ROTC.

In the summer of 1968, a year later, Mitch was commissioned a second lieutenant in infantry. That summer he attended ROTC summer camp at Ft. Riley, Kansas – a hellhole in the days before air conditioning. Of the four weekends out of six that the men got off, they drove to a motel and slept four in an air-conditioned room. The cookies that my mother sent him from Elgin, Illinois, melted in his locker, and he reported that at 3 a.m. the temperature was still unbelievably high.

At Fort Riley Mitch’s hayfever was so bad that he was in the infirmary for three days with pneumonia. He got out of sick bay for the night compass course because, if he had missed that exercise, he would have had to repeat summer camp.

Before Mitch went off to summer camp he insisted he didn’t want to get married until after he had served his ROTC two-year commitment. Upon his return from Ft. Riley he had changed his mind. We set our wedding date for September 7, 1969, as Mitch had a year’s active duty deferment to get a master’s degree at MSU.

During the year that Mitch got his master’s in communication and I finished my undergraduate journalism degree in three years, I typed on a manual typewriter numerous copies of Mitch’s request for a branch transfer to military intelligence while Mitch took an army correspondence course in psychological warfare.

We were married as planned, and when we returned from our honeymoon Mitch was scheduled to report to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for Infantry Officers Basic training. Mitch called an army clerk in St. Louis, Missouri, to ask about his branch transfer. She told him not to report to Ft. Benning; she would put his orders on hold until he heard about his branch transfer request.

This delay and the eventual granting of the branch transfer put us on the road to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, for Armor Officers Basic training (Military Intelligence officers had to first take a combat officers’ training course) in May 1970 a few days after the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent State University during a protest against President Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia.

Even though the army hadn’t said officers attending Armor Officers Basic (AOB) could bring their wives, I insisted on going with my husband. The Ft. Knox housing office had a list of available off-post housing, and we found a one-bedroom apartment in Muldraugh, Kentucky.

Mitch started AOB and suggested to a classmate from the South who lived near us that the two men carpool and their wives share the other car. Suddenly I was spending my days with someone who until now hadn’t known a Jew (me), let alone been friends with a Northerner.

And then came the ironic surprise: Even though the army hadn’t said we AOB wives could come, there was a training program for us to learn how to be proper Mrs. Lieutenants. I raised my hand to be chair of the entertainment committee for the wives’ graduation luncheon. Of course my carpool mate had to be on my committee as we shared a car.

Somehow we got three other AOB wives on our committee: a black (the correct term in those days), a Puerto Rican who spoke English and was the daughter of a career enlisted man, and a Puerto Rican who didn’t speak English. And then the five of us had to adjust to our racial, religious and class differences in order to get along.

This coming together of such different women because our husbands went on active duty at the same time made a lasting impression on me. I soon realized that, as different as the five of us were, our husbands’ well-being was the most important thing to each of us. And that in this shared concern we were all proper Mrs. Lieutenants.

Thirty-eight years later from my time as a new Mrs. Lieutenant, I published my novel Mrs. Lieutenant to tell a fictional story of this experience that had such an impact on my life.